My female Chloe Jean who is a week away from being 3 years old has developed this horrible licking problem. I am looking for any advice or insight as to what this was caused from and what I might be able to do to remedy it. It started about a month and a half ago at most I would like to believe from when I actually noticed that it was turning into a all the time thing. She will constantly lick her left leg, location is right above her paw where the last joint is before the paw. She is mostly a indoor dog, outside on leashes and usually not around other dogs so I'm ruling out fleas or ticks etc...but she has licked it to the point where you can visibly see the effect (she is a fawn brindle with four white paws)and it's right on the white and that white is starting to turn a pink-ish color from what I'm imagining is this licking. If anyone could please help me I'd appriciate it!

Thank you all for offering your insight and help links. Trust me both her and my boy Keyser are well taken care of dogs, microchiped, regular vet visits and even registered with the city we live in (probably the only owners of dogs that actually do this and liecense pitbulls on top of that! haha). I'll read up on the links today at some point and head into the vet ASAP. I have a vet in town here but I get this vibe from them the times I have had to take either one in (as this is not their normal vet) that they are very predjuice about pitbulls, not very helpful, and scared of the dogs which would never hurt anyone, and in turn my dogs know it, and it seems like they just do enough to fall under thier job title and kick me out asap. That being said I'll have to take her into her regular vet which isn't close and figure out a time.

That vet IS CRAPPY! I live in a smaller town, and they are the only vet in town or even relativly close. They are a last resort type of thing. I have a regular vet that sort of caters to the pitbull breed and they are wonderful. I unfortunantly do not have a photo hosting site, I'm sort of sketchy about uploading anything personal such as photos of my family (dogs included) over the internet. I looked at the links that were provided and those poor animals looked so bad. Chloe doesn't look like that at all (or at least not yet if that is ultimantly what happens) am I able to resize the photo small and upload without a hosting site does anyone know?

this is my first attempt at posting a photo anywhere on this site. It's not the best photo but you can see how where she is licking is starting to turn a pinkish color under her white hair. I keep looking at it and am undecided as of right now if the hair is being effected as in getting worn or nothing is happening to the hair yet? PS hope this photo thing works!

That's not nearly as bad as I expected it to be-I understand your concern and it's great that you noticed something was up right away.

Sometimes my dogs feet/wrists look like this-for her, she is allergic to a lot of stuff in our environment (grass, being one of them-tell me how that works). We prevent her from licking as much as we possibly can while we're home, and then when we leave we put a comfy cone on her. Our vet also recommended getting a thing of sensitive skin baby wet wipes...letting them dry out, and then making this apple cider vinegar/water solution to pour over them...and to wipe her feet each time she comes in from outside-that might be something you're interested in. I'd have to look up the measurements, but I think it was 1 part vinegar to 4 parts water. We just keep the wipes out on the porch on the table by the door. She's used to getting her feet wiped off so she'll adjust her body weight for each foot and sometimes she even lifts her feet for us

jaimie...YES something I and my wife would be very interested in knowing how to do exactly. Good part about that whole thing is...coincidentally we just had a baby boy recently. Little Anakin is now 5 months old and we just happen to have a lot of baby wipes on hand these days. haha. the comfy cone...NOT HAPPENING! She is just not going to accept that, and even if she was cool with it, my male Keyser wouldn't leave her alone. He would sort of be like a kid teasing another kid in elementary school, I can picture it now. But if you could find out exactly what to do and how to do it again with the wipes and cider and what kind and what measurements we would appreciate it very much!

Sorry it took me a while to get back with you. This is the mixture we used to soak the wipes in after they dried out (drying them out took longer than we thought-separate them into small piles, it'll help) .

Also, we only poured what would fit into the wet wipe container....my guess is you could half it (or quarter it) if you don't want the excess. We let it sit for a couple hours and then poured the excess in a Tupperware we were using to dip her feet in. She hated that (it didn't last long) and she was/is much more tolerant of the wipes.

We really need to be better at it than we are, but we HAVE seen a difference. Where her nails used to be this reddish/maroon color-they're now clear.